CHECKUP

Published 4:41 pm, Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Photo: John Carl D'Annibale

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

7-month-old Nathan Fischer of Niskayuna gets an H1N1 flu shot during a Schenectady County health department clinic for children under 5 years old at the Annie Schaffer Senior Center Tuesday afternoon November 10, 2009. (John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union) less

7-month-old Nathan Fischer of Niskayuna gets an H1N1 flu shot during a Schenectady County health department clinic for children under 5 years old at the Annie Schaffer Senior Center Tuesday afternoon November ... more

Photo: John Carl D'Annibale

CHECKUP

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Flu shots are tied to heart benefits

Getting a flu vaccine is associated with a lower risk of death in people with heart disease, a review of studies has found, and the effect is greatest in those who have had a recent heart attack or chest pain.

The review included five randomized trials that involved more than 6,400 heart patients. In all, there were 246 heart attacks and other major cardiovascular events, and 97 deaths from heart disease.

For patients with stable heart disease, a flu vaccination decreased the relative risk for a cardiovascular event by 36 percent. For people who had had a heart attack within the last year, the effect was greater: a 55 percent reduction in relative risk. Overall, those who were vaccinated had a 19 percent reduced risk of death.

Children, too, need to get a flu vaccine

Seasonal flu killed 830 children from 2004 to 2012, and 43 percent of them had no high-risk medical conditions. The rest of the children had neurological, pulmonary, cardiac and other serious disorders.

A new report, published in Pediatrics, used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on laboratory-confirmed cases of influenza in children under 18. Recommendations for vaccination changed over the period, but since 2008, the CDC has recommended a flu shot for everyone 6 months or older.

Of the 511 children whose vaccination status was known, 84 percent had not had a flu shot. In the 2009-10 flu season, when 66 children with a known vaccination status died, 64 of them were unvaccinated.

Death often came quickly: Most of the children died within a week of the onset of symptoms, and a third of them died outside the hospital or in an emergency room.

"A lot of parents don't think of flu as being very serious, especially if their child is healthy," said the lead author, Dr. Karen K. Wong, a medical officer at the CDC. "But this study shows that even healthy children are at risk."